Z TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON ORCHARDS. 



BY F. I. MANN, GILMAN. 



An apple is a thing of life. It is the developed protector of the 

 new life within seed. As its development by nature is for the 

 purpose of protecting the seed, we should endeavor to know the 

 relations existing between this development and the seed. 



One of the important points in growing apples, is the growing 

 of the perfect fruit. No matter how large the crop, it is compara- 

 tively worthless if misshappen and imperfect, which generally in- 

 timates poor keeping and poor quality. From my own experience, 

 1 cannot but question but that many of the imperfections can be 

 overcome by the use of arsenical spray, especially when the im- 

 perfections are caused by the codling moth and some other ene- 

 mies. 



But the cause of much of the imperfect fruit can be found in 

 the relations existing between the seed and the fruit. An apple, 

 like all life, has an uncertain amount of faulty environments to 

 overcome. The conditions for its development are probably never 

 absolutely perfect, and it takes more or less vital force to over- 

 come these faulty conditions. It may be generally supposed that 

 the parent tree furnishes all this vital force, but such cannot 

 be the case, or we would raise apples without seed as w T ell as with 

 them. The tree must supply the food for the development, but 

 it would seem that the vitality is supplied through the seed. A 

 careful examination of the seed portion of many apples, reveals 

 much from which to draw conclusions. When the season of poll- 

 enization is finished, many of the partly developed apples, from 

 time to time, fall to the ground. Those that fall the first few 

 weeks are rarely found to enclose fertilized seed. Some of 

 them may have one or two good seeds, but few, if any, have a full 

 quota of perfect seed. As the season advances those that drop are 

 mainly those whose seed have been affected by worms, and those 

 not having a full number of strongly pollenized seed. Their en- 

 vironments have been made too acute for their vital forces. When 

 the growing season is finished, the small apples will be found to 

 ■contain but few seed, as a rule. And if the season has been very 

 favorable'for their growth, a few will be found of small size without 

 any seed whatever. The apples that are one half well developed 

 and one half dwarfed, will be found with good seed in the devel- 

 oped side and no seed or poor seed in the dwarfed half. Apples 

 with blemishes will be found not so well seeded as the perfect 

 ones. When the harvest is done the life of the apple is not j'et 

 ended . Its purpose is to still longer protect the life it encloses, and 

 the duration of its existence depends somewhat on having that life 

 to protect. If the seed is weak, or injured by the admission of 

 air through a worm hole, the tendency of the apple is to decay 

 more rapidly. An apple that keeps the best, other things being 



